Former FBI Special Agent Bob Levinson called the Russian mafia “the most dangerous people on earth,” a terrifying notion when you consider that their ranks may be as many as 300,000 strong, and spread across 450 groups.

Chief among them is Moscow-based Solntsevskaya bratva, an extraordinarily wealthy and ruthless syndicate reputedly run by its founder, Sergei Mikhailov, a man both hardened by years in the gulags and especially connected thanks to the criminals he met there, which include reputed don Semion Mogilevich, among others.

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